The Wicked Wife (Murder in Marin Book 2) (13 page)

To her surprise, better known billionaires like four of the heirs to the Walton retail fortune and three of the heirs to the Mars candy fortune, were vastly outnumbered by people she—and most people, she reasoned—had never heard of, and knew absolutely nothing about.
 

Case in point, that Nigerian sugar king.
 

“I suppose that would be true of William Adams too,” Sylvia murmured to herself.
 
“Jack do you think that’s true?” she said, in the hope of averting her husband’s attention from today’s edition of
The Financial Times
.
 

“What is, dear?” Jack muttered, still deep in thought.

“That most people don’t know the name William Adams, even though he’s one of the world’s wealthiest people!”

“Certainly, I think that would be true. Of course, if he keeps getting photographed by paparazzi on the hunt for Willow, that will soon change.”
 

“But don’t you think it’s fascinating that he’s involved with a very wealthy woman as well?

“Not really. Wealth has a way of attracting wealth. But don’t think for a moment that they are in the same financial neighborhood. I’m certain Willow has nowhere near the worth of William Adams.”
 

Sylvia winced. Jack’s officious tone irritated his wife. “Oh, I think she’s very wealthy in her own right,” she countered.

“Just how wealthy, dear?” Jack asked with a raised eyebrow.

“Well…I’m not certain, but I think very wealthy!”

“Let me see what I can find out. I’m sure there are countless articles about her online.”
 

He started typing away furiously on his laptop. Jack was a man who could find almost any seemingly obscure fact on the Internet quite quickly—and at lightning speed if the information he was seeking started with a dollar sign.
 

“Okay,” Jack said less than five minutes later. “Ballpark, I’d say she’s worth twelve million.”

“There, I was right! You see?
She has a fortune of her own
.”

“Well, yes and no,” Jack insisted, again annoying Sylvia with his tone. “She’s actually a pauper compared to William Adams.”

“Impossible!” In anger, Sylvia’s voice went up an octave.

Jack took a pad and pencil and started writing down numbers. At the top of the page was a 1 followed by nine zeroes. At the bottom was the lowly number ten. Using his pencil as a pointer, as he stood over Sylvia and said, “You see, dear, one million is to one billion what one thousand is to one million.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means that Willow’s total worth of twelve million to his twenty-four billion is the equivalent of someone worth twelve thousand dollars marrying an individual who is worth twenty-four
million
dollars. Her twelve million is only one five-thousandth of one percent of William Adams’ stated worth.”

“But…how could that be? Twelve million is a great deal of money!”

“It is, but while people throw around a figure like a billion dollars very casually, they forget, or never realized, just how big a number one billion is, in reality. Here’s one simple example, one billion minutes ago, the Roman Empire was at its peak.”

“In other words, Willow might only be interested in William Adams’ fortune?” Sylvia asked, now somewhat bewildered.
 

“Tough to say. Unless you’re pretty careless with your money, twelve million dollars, even invested conservatively in, say, T-bills—and there is no more conservative investment than that—should provide one with a very comfortable life, and leave a handsome estate for your heirs. But if you’re someone who hates the idea of flying in anything less than a private jet, and you can’t imagine living in a home that’s less than a fifteen-room mansion with a view of the Golden Gate Bridge or atop one of those new Manhattan residential skyscrapers, there’s a very good chance that your money won’t last very long.”

“I never thought of it like that,” Sylvia murmured. But it certainly is true that there are the wealthy, and then there are the super wealthy.
 

“I know, dear. It’s all a bit unimaginable to us common folk, but here’s a simple rule. All wealth is relative. A poor person putting ten dollars in the church collection plate is equivalent to Willow putting in a thousand, or of Adams donating two and a half million. Each of them is giving an amount that is an equivalent percentage of their total worth. That’s why all charities appreciate the support of we mere mortals, but they work hard to cultivate the wealthiest among us.”
 

“If he asks her to marry him,” Sylvia said, thinking aloud, “I presume he’ll expect Willow to sign a prenuptial agreement.”

“I would think so. He doesn’t have a wife or children. But if he has any family—nephews, nieces, siblings, not to mention Fran’s side of the family—or a foundation, or charities he wants to assure get a portion of his wealth, he’ll need to define what she gets, regardless of whether they are still married, or divorced, at the time of his death.”

“It’s all a lot more complicated than when we got married!”

Jack nodded. “We had it easy. I was making twelve thousand a year in my first accounting job, and I think you were making about ten thousand as a teacher. Poor marrying poor doesn’t require a roomful of attorneys to iron out the details.”

“It does make life a lot simpler, doesn’t it?” Sylvia said with a weary smile.

“That it does. But all in all, I’d trade in our thousands for her millions—or better still, his billions. We can always have lawyers to slug out the fine points. After all, we’ll have the money to pay their fees.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Of course, there were anxious heirs, some closer than others.
 

When Fran died, her brother and sister, Michael and Kate, were bereaved at the loss of their younger sibling. When word of her death reached them, they joined William in his private study in the Belvedere mansion, where the three of them cried long and hard over Fran’s loss.

It was there that they received the news that Fran had bequeathed each of them five million dollars upon her death—a decision that both she and William had come to comfortably.
 

Grateful, albeit shocked, Kate asked, “Why do you want to do this?”

“Fran and I had a joint directive of what we wanted done with our estates in the event of our deaths. For some foolish reason, we always imagined that we would die at the same time; Fran used to call it, ‘
The Notebook
pact.’ It was undoubtedly romantic, but we never imagined living our lives as anything other than a couple. The only provision we made was that in the event of our deaths, our money would pass from one to the other. Of course, estates of any size, be they in the thousands or the billions, pass between spouses as a non-taxable event.”

“William, this is quite generous of you!” Michael added.

“It’s a start on what Fran would have liked to see happen for both of you. As you know, we decided several years ago that part of our giving back to the world would be covering the educational expenses for our nieces and nephews, and our support of them extends to as far as they want to go in school. Whatever it is, we’ll—I mean, I’ll be there for them.”

The meeting of the three of them ended in a long round of tearful thanks, hugs, and kisses.
 

William’s meeting with his two siblings, Andrew and Benjamin went much the same.

Benjamin was not an academic, but a bohemian artist. He was pleased with his five million dollar gift as well. The youngest of the three boys, he slipped in and out of relationships. Always reserved, and without children, he was never as involved with people as he was with the recurring challenge of a blank canvas.

Andrew, who had his parents’ love of chemistry, became a professor of biochemistry. He was never happier than when faced with a new class of anxious and curious freshmen. The oldest of the three siblings, he was a bit of a late bloomer, now happily married to the same woman for the last eighteen years. They shared two girls, ages sixteen and fourteen, and a son, aged twelve.

On the way home, Benjamin and Andrew agreed that they were overwhelmed, and indeed blessed, to have had such a supportive brother, and they grieved the loss of a wonderful sister-in-law.

William headed into the issue of a prenuptial agreement with all the preparedness of a pilot hitting clear air turbulence. What had quietly occurred to everyone else—particularly to his bride-to-be—had remarkably been an issue to which he had given little, if any, thought.

As his friend and senior partner, James should have said something, but didn’t.
 

It was only an innocent comment, made in jest by his regular and younger racquetball partner that set William to thinking about it.

At home that night, as he slowly sipped a fine aged Scotch in front of fireplace in the library, he looked out onto the bay. The fog was so dense that it shrouded that the lights of Sausalito. San Francisco had completely vanished from view.
 

I have to say something to Willow, he thought. Without an agreement being signed prior to our marriage, she’ll be entitled to half of my estate.
 

William took great pride in his often-expressed belief that there was more to life than money, but half of his estate was an amount north of twelve billion dollars. Even that is an insanely huge amount to leave someone so young and financially naïve.
 

And what if there was such a thing as a life beyond this world? An idea William wrestled with often. If so, how would he ever explain to Fran, who had played an essential role in building this great fortune, that he parted with half of their estate for a famous fashion model nearly thirty years his junior?

“How should I tell Willow that I’ll need her to sign a prenup?” William asked James the following morning.

“Do what any negotiator would do,” his friend advised him. “Be open, kind, thoughtful—and then present her with a prenup that offers her the lowest number you think she might accept.”

“But I have no idea what that would be!”

“Oh, come on, William! You’re a lot tougher on the company that provides the firm’s cleaning services. Buck up, man. This is about your family’s fortune!”

James had reason to be more than a little enthusiastic with William about a prenup. Since having introduced them, Willow had cut off any and all of the brief encounters he so happily anticipated.
 

As far as James was concerned, she could use a bit of a beating down. Yes, he was being an ass about it, but he did not like having his needs ignored.

“So, I’ll start with a hundred million if the union should fail,” William said, then quickly corrected himself and said, “No, two-hundred and fifty million dollars, take it or leave it.”

William winced. “That’s harsh. I think I’ll ring up Bob Ivan, he’s done family law for years and must have some idea of what formulas are used for setting a reasonable amount.”

“Bob would be a fine one to ask,” James said, knowing that Ivan had a sharp eye when it came to the bottom line. “He’s been on one side or another of enough Belvedere marital cases that he probably knows a lot more about this than either of us.”